HEALTHCARE

Everyone knows that when hospitals are not functioning due to an outage they place the lives of patients, staff members, and visitors at risk. What administrators and facility managers often do not realize is that during a time of crisis, a lit hospital is like a beacon to residents. Many visitors won’t leave and many community members flood in, looking for shelter, assistance, food, and water.

If your backup generators are only sized to supply your most critical functions, you will likely have issues handling this crowd of people. Elevators may not be operating, hallways may not be lit, and your cafeteria may not be able to serve food. Your generators need to be able to provide the power to support to all of your community, not just your patients and staff.

In addition, recent trends also show the health care industry is moving to a hub-and-spoke model to provide more localized care. This means ambulatory surgery centers, long-term care facilities, and hospice centers may require backup power to ensure critical procedures are not interrupted in the event of a utility outage, as well as maintain patient safety and comfort.

The emergency power plant secures power to the entire hospital electrical equipment in case of grid failure. Emergency power must be available within few seconds to life safety and critical branch loads if a utility failure occurs.

What is not as well-known is that over time, healthcare facilities often open new wings or add new state-of-the-art equipment to better serve the patients. It becomes unclear what systems are linked to the generators and performing routine load bank exercises. While it may seem unsettling, the best test is to kill power to the building and determine which loads are actually connected to the backup system. And it is better to do this before an actual emergency occurs, so staff members have time to react and correct any issues or add generators, if needed.

In addition, administrators, facility managers, and specifiers may need to meet state and municipal codes for the location of generators and minimum generator runtime standards. For example, emergency generators need to be protected from floods, earthquakes, and fire, so those requirements typically rule out most basement and rooftop placements.

PRAMAC Power solutions provide backup stand-by solutions to secure any building against a shutdown. Our generators, also available on special colors to minimize the overall architectural impact, are designed to run in parallel, thanks to modular parallel panels, with soundproof canopy and need easy maintenance: one genset can be stopped while the other one remains connected. PRAMAC provides full technical support during the installation.

Please click on the links below to find out more about PRAMAC Healthcare projects worldwide: